Rather than a triumphant replay of the old hits, Jurassic World: Rebirth is a bit more like Malibu Stacy with a new hat. It’s a repackaged product with a couple of superficial bells and whistles that its makers believe audiences will want to see purely to remain in the loop with all the dino-based shenanigans.
Its numerous flagged/underscored/exclamation-pointed call-backs to the ’90s originals work double duty as balmy-eyed nostalgia and a tragic reminder that this is a franchise that hasn’t been able to whisk up an original thought since the credits rolled on the Steven Spielberg’s OG mega hit over three decades ago. And you know things are bad when you’re watching a summer blockbuster that’s part of the vaunted Jurassic Park IP and thinking, “Ho hum… I wonder what’s going on over at Skull Island right now…”.
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Veteran screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the first sequel, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, in 1997, returns to the DNA-splicing fray, and this new film feels every bit the rejected proposal from those salad days, a script whose dog-eared pages have been salvaged from the filing cabinet/waste bin of his old office. Often bracingly generic in its characterisations, its deployment of exposition and the occasional slow beat where someone will idly reminisce about the past, it’s baffling that someone who has worked on all varieties of film and at every level in the industry could deliver something so utterly devoid of interest or originality.
Aside from its shoddy conceit, it’s a script that does the dirty on its cast, in particular Mahershala Ali as the mercenary-for-hire Duncan who is given the remit to be recklessly impulsive when it’s revealed that he’s suffering from deep family-based trauma. Scarlett Johansson, meanwhile, has a nice line in cocky smirking as covert opps maestro Zora. She’s given the absolute non-dillemma of whether she’ll toe the corporate line as strictly set out by linen-suited weasel Krebs (Rupert Friend*), or score the winning goal for global morality and heed the wisdom of dashing palaeontologist Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey).
The plan here is that Krebs has offered Zora silly money to capture blood and tissue samples from three live dinosaurs employing technology created by Loomis. The snag is that their targets – representing land, sea and air – all now thrive in a tropical microclimate along the equator that also happens to be the island that was used as a testing ground for dinosaur cross-breeding. We all know it’s not going to be the quick “pop in, pop out” escapade that they all think it will be, and our gang also have to deal with the mightily naffed off “D‑Rex”, which is exactly like if a T‑Rex had been smashed in the face with the world’s largest frying pan.
The film struggles to find a justification for its existence, and we’re told that the world has grown weary of the spectacle of dinosaurs. Which in itself is a completely cynical assumption in line with saying, say, that humanity will one day grow tired and yearn for the extinction of panthers. Krebs and his deep-pocketed paymasters believe that this flashpoint of collective apathy is the time to make their play and do a little bit of under-the-radar dinosaur vivisection in order to produce a cure for heart disease, which they can charge a small fortune for once they have the patent.
The “human interest” element to the story is bolted on in the form of superdad Reuben (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and his two daughters (Audrina Miranda as pre-teen Isabella and Luna Blaise as late-teen Teresa) and Teresa’s charming slacker boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono) as they heedlessly attempt to sail through dino infested waters in the name of family adventure. And this is two minutes after being told repeatedly that this area is a human no-go zone as death will likely be imminent. So sympathy levels are a tad hard to come by, even if the level of performance and character depth is a little bit higher/deeper on this side of the playing field.
What saves the film from the summer doldrums is the typically stellar work by director Gareth Edwards, who, despite the quality of the materials he’s been given to work with, proves once more that he’s one of the most interesting and original artists in Hollywood when it comes to creating CG set pieces. There’s one sequence at the film’s mid-point that pushes the technology to satisfying extremes by having digital dinosaurs intersecting with human characters while being flung down some river rapids.
Edwards’s involvement was the one thing keeping the candle aflame in terms of our hopes that this moribund, never-ending franchise might have turned a corner. Yet even working at full pelt, there’s just too much that’s wrong and silly and derivative about this tired, tired run-out. The actors are competent; there are a few tasty zingers; the effects are seamless. But the whole enterprise just feels like the same thing we’ve seen over and over again, and that the addition of a “new hat” has been deemed more of an irritant than a gift to create something fresh.
*I’d like to make readers aware of a pertinent comment that was made on the LWLies private group chat by my esteemed colleague Hannah Strong, who noted that, “He was v much Rupert Foe in JW”. It felt right to include the observation in this, our official review of the film. Thanks.
Does anyone get excited for the birth of their fourth child? Or seventh? Or is it more like that feeling you get when you fit piece number 2000 in that last hole in the jigsaw puzzle? You know what I’m talking about. You’re excited when you dump the pieces out of the box and find all of the edges. You’re still pretty into it as you assemble the major features of the picture.
But when all that’s left is the monotonous portions of sky and water, you grit your teeth and methodically try to fit every single remaining piece into every single remaining opening, silently cussing every time a piece doesn’t fit. As that last piece settles in, you feel relief at finishing it, mixed with the thought, “I’m never doing a puzzle again.” Is this still an analogy to having kids? You decide. Bet you’re wondering how many kids I have.
That’s also the entirety of the Jurassic Park/World franchise. Jurassic Park was new exciting, and awesome. Every film after that has been increasingly disappointing to the point where you have to question your sanity for continuing to go back for more. You’ll even lie to yourself that number four (Jurassic World) was better than most. Am I still actually talking about kids? You know you’re thinking it.
Jonathan Bailey and Scarlet Johansson star in “Jurassic World Rebirth” (2025). Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is what happens when you’ve run out of ideas. Scratch that, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is what happens when you run out of ideas. Rebirth is what happens when you have a midlife crisis and don’t care that you ran out of birth control. Despite its title implying a reboot of the franchise, Rebirth is just another sequel in the franchise.
Synopsis
To be fair, it does kinda-sorta reboot in that it’s five years later and Earth’s climate has killed the vast majority of the dinosaurs not living around the equator. The military isn’t trying to weaponize them, nobody is trying to sell them on the black market, and there isn’t a prehistoric locust to be found anywhere. There isn’t even a third attempt to build an amusement park or zoo around them. That leaves pharmaceuticals.
That’s right folks. This time around, dinosaurs are going to cure…checking notes…heart disease? That’s it? Nothing lofty like cancer or Alzheimer’s? And, they’re not even really going to cure it, just treat it so people can live ten to twenty years longer? I guess from a how-do-we-make-as-much-money-as-possible angle, treating heart disease would be rather lucrative. Those GLP-1 medications are making boatloads of money.
If you’re confused, dinosaurs aren’t ‘literally’ curing heart disease. However, that would be an interesting scene – a velociraptor wearing a lab coat and stethoscope walking toward a patient with a syringe. Wasn’t that a Dr. Who episode? [Googles for five minutes] Anyway, pharmaceutical executive Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend) puts together a team to go on a quest to obtain blood samples from three of the largest dinosaurs to ever live.
Like all good video games, each dinosaur inhabits a different biome, providing a different setting for each MacGuffin. In this case, sea, land, and air. Why the largest animals? They lived the longest and had the biggest hearts. Why three different species? Diversity, I guess. And to make sure you understand how video-game-like this all is, two of the three dinosaurs are the kind that want to eat them.
Discussion
It’s not that the filmmakers couldn’t have made an exciting movie featuring the team hunting for one elusive herbivore. Or even getting close enough to the land dinosaur (Titanosaurus) by overcoming a bunch of sharp teeth-related obstacles. They just chose to go with the most obvious excuse to include harrowing scenes featuring a Mosasaurus (sea) and Quetzalcoatlus (air) – to send the team of humans to the carnivores.
The team itself is a by-the-numbers quest team. In addition to the money guy, there’s the wheelman – boat captain Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali), the brains – paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailer), the muscle/dino chow (Ed Skrein, Bechir Sylvain, Philippine Velge), and the team leader – mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson). All this sounds like a perfectly fine summer action blockbuster, right?
Bechir Sylvain, Jonathan Bailey, and Scarlet Johansson star in “Jurassic World Rebirth” (2025). Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Here’s where it gets redundant and pointless – a second group of people gets tangled up in the mission. Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) is sailing across the ocean with his two daughters, Teresa (Luna Blaise) and Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Teresa’s stoner boyfriend Xavier (David Iacono).
After the Mosasaurus capsizes their boat (and inexplicably doesn’t finish the job and eat them), they are rescued by Zora and crew. When they all get to the island, the two groups are separated, and the film jumps back and forth between the fetch quest crew and the stupid family drama. And all because there is a clause in the franchise contract (or so I’m told) that requires children to be put in peril. Don’t pretend you aren’t rooting for these annoying vestigial screenplay organs to become a dinosaur’s late-night indigestion.
Further Analysis
Here’s where it gets worse. In a nod back to Jurassic World, Jurassic World Rebirth features more mutant dinosaurs. One is a cross between a raptor and a pterosaur, and the other is a cross between a xenomorph and a rancor. No, I’m not mixing my movies. The Distortus Rex (a name I didn’t makeup) looks like if Return of the Jedi and Alien got drunk and, nine months later, the result was a baby no mother could love.
And that just about sums up the movie as a whole. Okay, so maybe that’s a little harsh. Jurassic World Rebirth isn’t the worst movie in the franchise. That’s because Jurassic World: Dominion exists. And this latest film does have a few really fun action sequences, including our old friend the T-Rex. And, Johansson, Ali, Bailey, and Friend give pretty good performances when they easily could have phoned them in and nobody would have noticed or cared.
Conclusion
Between the unnecessary Delgado family, the insipid and lazy mutant dinos, the film consisting largely of rehashing stuff from its preceding films, and two Titanosaurs getting to second base with each other as the humans watch in awe, Jurassic World Rebirth inspires the same question as every family with several children – are we done yet?
Rating: Ask for seventeen dollars back and call your doctor if you experience blurred vision, bleeding from the ears, involuntary eye-rolls, memory loss, a severe drop in IQ, or a strong desire to throw Junior Mints at people who unironically clap at the end of this movie.
On Truth & Movies this week, we discuss new releases Jurassic World Rebirth and The Shrouds, and speak to David Cronenberg about his latest film. Finally, for film club it’s a Club Little White Lies members’ pick – we revisit 1983’s Videodrome.
Joining host Leila Latif are Hannah Strong and David Jenkins.
Truth & Movies is the podcast from the film experts at Little White Lies, where along with selected colleagues and friends, they discuss the latest movie releases. Truth & Movies has all your film needs covered, reviewing the latest releases big and small, talking to some of the most exciting filmmakers, keeping you across important industry news, and reassessing great films from days gone by with the Truth & Movies Film Club.
